Another Romantic Dawn
by thermopylae
Summary: AU. In Manhattan, five people's paths meet and overlap, and finally join together. Sanji firstperson POV, rated T for language
1. Chapter 1

**disclaimer:** I do not own "One Piece" or the song "Fake Plastic Trees." I also do not own New York City, although I hear a well-calculated marriage can work wonders.

**notes:** Am I the only one who can no longer listen to "Fake Plastic Trees" without laughing hard? That's where this fic came from. Except a fic set to this song can only take place in Manhattan, in the latter half of the 20th century...hence the AU-ness. Read, review, critique, please.

"Another Romantic Dawn" 1

_"Her green plastic watering can  
For her fake chinese rubber plant  
In fake plastic earth  
That she bought from a rubber man  
In a town full of rubber plans  
To get rid of itself  
It wears her out, it wears her out"_

If you asked me when it started, I'd tell you it all began when Nami came in with that god-awful rubber bonsai.

Well...maybe not. After all, it wouldn't have mattered _what_ she came in with if it hadn't been Luffy who'd sold it to her. So I guess it started the day Luffy and Zoro first came into the Baratie for a drink.

It's a small place, the Baratie. Near the corner of East 23rd and Lexington, right inbetween the greengrocer's and the Taj Mahal. That's the restaurant, not the palace.

Yeah, it's a small place, but the food's good. The food's good 'cause I'm here. Me and old peg-leg Zeff. It's small because Zeff doesn't give a shit about business. He just wants to make his food. So we take in enough money to pay the bills and buy groceries, and Zeff lets the rest go hang. All right for him, I guess. With that leg of his, he's got nowhere to go anyway. Me, I stay for the girls. Swear to God, New York's got the best-looking women on the planet. If you went around the world twice, you couldn't find better ones. I mean, yeah, I've never even been up past Poughkeepsie, but I just bet.

Anyway, when Buggy's Circus is in town, Luffy and Zoro always come in for a drink.

They're funny, those two. Luffy's one of the acrobats up at the Circus and Zoro was the sword-swallower until he quit. I've seen them perform a couple of times, when Zoro gave me tickets instead of paying the damn bill, and yeah, they're all right. You'd think no one would be able to stick three swords down his throat, but Zoro downs them like they're fucking candy. He says only one of them's real, but still. Weird as he is, though, Luffy's weirder. I swear that kid has no bones, or if he does, all two-hundred-and-six of them are made out of rubber. He can bend himself double (I mean really double, head touching his knees double), put his feet behind his neck, everything. His stomach's made of rubber too, I can tell you that. I took some physics in high school, but there is just no scientific law to explain how Luffy manages to eat all that food. We've had him clean out the entire kitchen before. He puts it away like not only has he not eaten for a year, but isn't going to for another. Crazy kid.

You can kinda see why he is crazy, though. His mother - she's dead, now - used to do the trapeze in the circus, but his father's some hot-shot businessman out in L.A. So this West Coast business bastard decides it's not good enough knocking some circus girl up once. He does it twice, and like the gentleman he is, leaves her to deal with the baby both times. God forbid he take in some circus brats or pay child support or something. Jesus. And people ask why I prefer the company of women.

So Luffy and his brother Ace grew up in the circus with their mom. They used to call Ace "Fire-Eater." He put flaming sticks in his mouth and blew out fire, walked on hot coals, stuff like that. I never could tell if it was real fire or if he was faking it, but it looked pretty real from the bleachers. Three years ago, though, he took off, just like that. Sometimes I wonder where he is. I never really knew the guy, but every time he did his show, you could just tell - here's a guy who really has it together. Anything he wants, he gets. I bet if he walked up to the guards at the Tower of London and asked for the crown jewels, they'd say, "Sure, knock yourself out." I wish I could do the same, but...you know how it is. When you've got a business to run.

A few years ago, Luffy and Zoro started coming around. Luffy just wants food, but Zoro always orders a whole lot of beer. Yeah, I know the law as well as the next guy, but I say screw that. I've been at the Baratie since I was nine, cooking and serving and being general shit-boy, and Zeff never said "Oh, no, what if I'm breaking Child Labor laws?" So I don't feel too bad about giving alcohol to anyone who asks, so long as they don't give us away when they step out to the street again. Zoro knows how to hold his liquor, though. Luffy doesn't. The most I'll let him have is a rum-and-Coke, with half the rum.

I used to think it was weird that they always hung out together. Luffy never shuts up, and most of the time he's like the annoying kid brother you can never get rid of. And Zoro, he's a cocky asshole when he wants to be, but he's quiet and usually doesn't talk unless you talk to him. For a couple of months, I thought, okay, Zoro's like this kid's babysitter. Seems to like Luffy well enough, but mostly he's just here to keep the guy from getting screwed over or mugged or whatever. But then I noticed how Zoro's eyes would get this far-away look in them sometimes when Luffy wasn't talking to him, and I realized that wasn't it at all. Zoro's got a Past, with a capital 'P." Bad memories he doesn't want to think about. He needs Luffy to distract him and keep him in the present moment, always, where the memories can't reach him.

I try to help. I pick fights. I insult him. I gang up on him with Luffy. Anything to get his mind off whatever bad thing happened. Yeah, I act like an ass sometimes, but I'm not _actually_ a total bastard, get it?

But you know, it wouldn't have mattered that it was Luffy who sold Nami that bonsai if I hadn't been going with her at the time. So I guess it all really started when I walked into Arlong's On the Park for the first time two years ago.

-----


	2. 2

"Another Romantic Dawn" 2

_"She lives with a broken man  
A cracked polystyrene man  
Who just crumbles and burns  
He used to do surgery  
For girls in the eighties  
But gravity always wins  
It wears him out, it wears him out"_

Arlong's On the Park is a shop along the east side of Central Park that sells old maps and compasses and stuff like that. It's a huge place, one of those converted brownstone buildings, and real gaudy. Fake gold gilt on the knocker. Marble statues of naked boys. I'd never gone in, because of the prices, but one day I was really desperate for a map and the secondhand bookstores I usually went to weren't carrying anything.

What map was I looking for? Sumer. The Euphrates and Tigris. Where this thing we call civilization all began. If I never get to travel the world to learn cuisine, if I never get to cook again and there were just one place I were allowed to go to die in, I'd choose Mesopotamia. I know there's war there and everything, but that'd be okay. If I couldn't cook there wouldn't be much point to living anyway. They could shoot me. I'd just want to lie down somewhere, maybe the place where the two rivers meet the Persian Gulf, and think for a bit. That's where we come from. The first cities, the first laws, the first division of classes, the first temples, the beginning of all the good and bad things that come with organized society. I just want to see where it all got started. Maybe then it'd all make sense. Everything would.

Like I said, I was desperate. So I walked in bold as you please into Arlong's. There was no one in the store but Nami. She was sitting behind the cash register, orange hair hooked behind one ear, her head bent down over something she was drawing. She didn't look up when I walked in.

I went up to her and asked if she had any maps on ancient Sumer. She took her eyes off what she was doing and gave me a look. Nami is very beautiful and when she gives you that look, it makes you feel very uncomfortable. Like she knows you're checking her out, but all she wants to know is how much money you've got.

"I doubt we've anything in your price range," she said coolly, and went back to her drawing.

That was the first thing she ever said to me. 'I doubt we've anything in your price range.' Obviously I couldn't let it slide.

"Sweetheart, I assure you I've got enough to cover _all_ your needs," I said, leaning my arm against the counter.

She didn't look up this time. "Are you calling me cheap?" she asked, not sounding very interested.

I couldn't answer that without damning _one_ of us, so I said, "Look, I just want a map of the Euphrates-Tigris watershed. Something small will do. If it's really too expensive, I'm a cook - do you want a meal voucher? It's a good place -"

"I don't know if you've heard," she interrupted me, "but this is the twentieth century. We don't operate on the barter system anymore." She was looking at me again, though, and there was a little smile at the corner of her mouth, like, _keep talking_.

I gave her the address of the Baratie. She looked behind her over her shoulder for a minute, then winked and said she'd bring the map around sometime during the weekend. She asked how much money I had on me. I said fifty bucks.

"I'll take the fifty now," Nami said very sweetly. "That makes the balance $300, so when I come to your restaurant, I expect a meal worth that amount. At _least_." Without waiting for an answer, she took her drawing - I saw it was a map - got off her chair, and disappeared down the hall and through a door. Good-bye.

I had to walk all the way back to 23rd. I didn't have enough money for the bus; when I said fifty bucks I meant the change, too. I didn't care, though. Nami was coming with a map and all it was costing was a $300 meal. Hell, _all_ our meals are worth that much, and that's not just bragging. And oh man, Nami was coming to the Baratie. I felt wonderful.

She was as good as her word, of course. I didn't think she was the type to show someone up. And she had the map, laid flat in a water-proof folder. It was larger than I expected, covering almost all of one table. Nami took it out very carefully. I don't know a lot _about_ maps - a map of the watershed was just something I thought it might be nice to have - but this one was really nice. Bright colors. Sea monsters and a mermaid on the compass.

"It's beautiful," I said when I brought out her salad.

"Thanks," Nami said. She poked at the lettuce delicately with the fork. "I drew it myself."

I almost dropped the plate I was carrying. Drew it _herself_? "I thought...your store dealt in antique maps?" I asked, trying not to sound like I was accusing her of anything.

"That's what we advertise," she agreed. "Oh, this is good! Arlong, however, is a fraud. He makes me copy all the maps and then we sell them at extorbitant prices. Did you do this salad?"

"What? Yeah, thanks." I was pleased for two seconds before snapping back to the point. "You charged me $350 for a fake? And you're admitting it?"

"$50 and a meal," Nami corrected me. "And I believe the original is worth a quarter of a million, so don't complain. Real or fake, it shows you the Euphrates-Tigris watershed, doesn't it? The original wouldn't have been accurate, anyway. The closest the cartographer got to Mesopotamia was a biography of Alexander the Great." There was real scorn in her voice. I looked at her.

"I want to make maps of my own," she said, stabbing her salad viciously now. "But Arlong won't let me. He just makes me copy other people's stuff. Some of them, if they're really old, can't even be called maps. They're just _drawings_." She sounded really contemptuous now. "I told him I wasn't doing the sea dragons and the squids, though, no matter what. I have Usopp do them for me instead. You know, the guy who sells paintings in front of the Library."

"Yeah, I know him." I couldn't believe what I was hearing. I went back into the kitchen. When I came back out with the rest of her meal, Nami was sitting at the table with her head resting in the palm of her hand. She'd pushed away her salad. Her eyes were the same as Zoro's, full of bad memories.

When I approached, though, she snapped right back into who-gives-a-shit mode and gave me a smile that had my heart puddling into goo around my feet. "That looks good!" she said, clapping her hands enthusiastically. I smiled at her, even though it was obvious she didn't know a thing about real cuisine, for all her bluffing about $300 meals. I didn't know a thing about maps, after all. We were even.

Namie put the map and the folder on another table as I set down glazed duck, foie gras on wheat toast, truffles, and slices of tai sashimi. She started eating, giving little exclamations of pleasure with each dish. I speared a bite or two off the plates, just to congratulate myself.

"Why are you telling me this?" I asked her. "Forgery's a pretty serious crime, you know."

She just looked at me around a mouthful of foie gras. That's when we started dating.

_"She looks like the real thing  
She tastes like the real thing  
My fake plastic love  
But I can't help the feeling  
I could blow through the ceiling  
If I just turn and run  
It wears me out, it wears me out"_

Going out with Nami should have been the best thing that happened to me, but of course I fucked it up. Nami told me everything about herself. Not in one sitting or anything. But if something came up, she talked about it. She was the realest person I'd ever met. Whatever she was feeling, she was feeling it 100 percent. That made her bad moods worse, of course, but at least I never had to doubt if she was being sincere, or if she was just saying something to make me happy. If Nami thought something, she said it. If it wasn't how she felt, she didn't.

I never told her a thing about me. I told myself it was because she never asked, but that was only half the truth. Nami didn't ask because she didn't want to have to ask. I was her boyfriend. I should have given her these things freely, on my own.

I couldn't, though. That's what did it, in the end. She couldn't put up with me not being 100 percent real any longer. It was like when I checked out other girls. Nami never got jealous, because she knew it was just flirting and didn't mean anything, but it made her so mad that I talked to her the same way I flirted with the other girls. Like it was just talk. But it was too scary to be real. It's a terrifying thought, to give part of yourself away, to let someone else carry part of you around. What if they go away? What if they never come back? I didn't want to be a hypocrite, though, so I never took Nami seriously, either. If she talked about Arlong, I changed the subject. If she asked me my opinion, I made a joke. In the end I guess she just got fed up.

One day Nami came into the Baratie when Zoro and Luffy were already there. They started chatting. Next thing I knew, Nami and Zoro were trading insults back and forth and Luffy was laughing his head off. Next thing after that, Zoro was fuming and Nami was sitting back in her seat with a very satisfied look on her face.

Well, there she goes, I thought. Lost and gone forever. My darling Clementine.

Sure enough, Zoro quit the circus a couple of weeks later and moved into Nami's apartment. Luffy moved on with the circus. I stayed behind the counter and watched while Nami and Zoro held hands and bickered.

I fought Zoro on a lot of things, but I never fought him on this. I never asked if he loved her. I never told him he'd better make her the center of his whole damn world or I'd break his neck. I never asked Nami if she loved him. I never told her I'd stop playing around, that I'd be as real as anything if she'd just wait until my shift ended. That's me all over, see? You want a guy who'll do and say a million things that don't mean shit, then I'm your man. But I can't do a single thing that's real. Not to save my life.

It didn't last. They both had too much baggage. Zoro didn't help Nami carry the weight any more than I did, but he didn't even joke. He just drew deeper into himself as even Nami's constant mood swings and outrageous money schemes failed to distract him. And then Nami started getting quiet too, until finally she stopped smiling altogether.

One day Nami came in alone, carrying this plastic flower pot under her arm. The pot was filled with fake dirt, and in the fake dirt she'd planted a rubber bonsai tree.

"It's nice," she said, showing me. "Isn't it?" Her voice was uncertain, like she was not sure herself what on earth possessed her to buy a fake plant and carry it into a restaurant. Her face was tired. There were these awful purple circles under her eyes. All the fire, all the beautiful things I loved about her had been beaten out - by Arlong, the maps she had to copy, the maps she couldn't draw, the Manhattan grime, this affair with Zoro.

I wanted to reach across the counter and draw her close. I wanted to get her out of this place, this city that keeps you so busy you don't notice you're alone, surrounds you with so many people you don't notice that none of them gives a shit about all the ways life's let you down. I wanted to drag her up to Grand Central and put her on the next train to anywhere, so long as it was away from here. I wanted to shout, You don't deserve this! I wanted to run out and come back with the whole world for her birthday present.

But I didn't do any of that. I just asked her where she'd gotten the bonsai.

"From Luffy," she replied, and then we both just kind of sat there, not saying any of the things we should have.

-----  
**notes:** Sanji's AU character comes from volume 6 when he's watching Zoro's fight with Mihawk. Nami's AU character comes from a 'what if?' - if she never asked Luffy to help her in volume 9, and instead continued to get ground down. Zoro's AU character comes from the way he seems to laugh less and less the further the crew gets on the Grand Line.


	3. 3

"Another Romantic Dawn" 3

_"If I could be who you wanted  
If I could be who you wanted  
All the time, all the time"_

Now it's three months later and I'm walking up Fifth Ave., heading towards 42nd, dodging tourists and letting the girls know I appreciate their, you know, girlness, without being sleazy about it. I don't want to be one of those guys girls complain to their girlfriends about later on at the bar.

I wish I could say something like "New York's better when the tourists aren't here," but let's face it - the tourists are _always_ here, with their awkward shapeless hair and fannypacks. You'd think in fucking _March_ they'd give it a rest, you know, take a bit of time to get the old farm in order or whatever, but no, they think the Empire State Building's is going to pick itself up and walk away if they're not here to stop it.

I push past a family milling around a corner looking for _other_ members of their family (how many kids does somebody need, anyway?) and ignore the people shoving paper advertisments for clothing warehouse sales, and keep going until I hit 42nd Street and the Public Library. He's here, of course, at the top of the stairs, eating a sandwich and shivering a bit in the March wind.

"Usopp." I nod and squat down next to him. He's done some new paintings since the last time I saw him, so I spend a few minutes looking at those.

"Hey, Sanji." Usopp gives me a nervous grin around his sandwich. When he's not telling one of his lies, the kid's always nervous, like he's afraid you're going to hit him. I don't know why he hawks his stuff at the Library. I keep telling him the Met would make more sense, since it's an _art museum_ and all, but I guess he likes it here.

I pick up a watercolor of a girl diving into a swimming pool. Her blond hair is flying out behind her. "How's Nami? You seen her around?" I ask, trying to sound casual.

Usopp shrugs. He's more interested in the painting in my hands, watching to see if I'll buy it. "Not too good," he says. "Arlong's been giving her more work than usual, to keep her in line. She looks like she hasn't slept in weeks."

"Yeah?" There are lots of things I'd like to do to Arlong, but now is not the time. "She still got that rubber plant? You know that Luffy sold it to her?"

"Yeah, I know." Usopp scratches at his hair. He brightens up. "Speaking of Luffy," he says, "I'm meeting him later today. We're gonna get my ship from the harbor and sail away."

I snort. Boy, this guy thinks I'm an idiot or something. "You know, lying about a boat is one thing," I tell him. "But actually leading a guy on like that...that's going a bit too far, you think?"

"I'm not leading anyone on!" he says. Two spots of red have appeared in his cheeks. "And I'm not lying, either. I really do have a ship! My dad left it to me."

"Uh huh." I put the painting of the girl down and pick up another one with paratrooping pigs in it. "I'm head chef at the Waldorf-Astoria, and the son of a ship-leaving father is scraping a living together helping a con man and selling paintings outside the Public Library because he _wants_ to."

"It's true," Usopp mumbles. He wads up the sandwich wrapper and tosses it into that oversized woman's bag he always carries around. "Look, if you're not gonna buy anything, could you move? You're making me look bad." He nods to the people walking past in front of us. None of them pay much attention to the paintings. Shows what they know. Fucking plebians.

"I'll take the pigs." I dig around in my pocket until I find a $10. It's not nearly as much as the diving girl - that one's going for a sweet $100 - but I kinda get the feeling Usopp wouldn't want me to take that one anyway. It's the same girl, over and over, in all the paintings. He never paints the same ship or field twice, but that blonde girl always stays. She's always busy, too. Riding a horse, or running, or reaching for something. She's never still. I wonder about her a lot, who she is, why Usopp never paints her just sitting down, but I don't, because I can tell she's real. Maybe she's the only real thing he's got. So I never ask.

I take the painting and stand up. I head back towards the Baratie without much of a good-bye. Sailing off in a ship, my ass. I'll see Usopp tomorrow in front of the Library, and the day after that, and the week after that, and so on and so forth until we both die.

People come to New York because they complain that nothing ever changes in their little shit towns. Well, I've got news for them. Nothing ever changes in New York, either. The city's just really good at making you think otherwise. If you keep your eyes open enough, you'll see it's the same bum on the same corner year after year. It's the same yuppie Wall Street hotshot coming out of Starbucks at the same time every day with the same drink. And you're part of the scenery, too. You're the guy who walks to the Public Library every Tuesday afternoon. You're the guy who's always behind the counter at the little French restaurant on 23rd and Lexington. You're the guy who'll stay forever because you're too chickenshit to leave.

It's not even that life is that bad here. The Baratie makes okay money. I don't freeze in the winter. Me and Zeff, we've had some good times. We walk through Central Park in the summer and laugh at all the people pretending it doesn't smell like horse shit. I know when Zeff's teaching me a dish, I'm getting the real deal, not the fake French-Italian-Moroccan-Chinese slop you get at other restaurants. I love the feeling of the kitchen, the organized chaos of it and the process of making a coherent meal. I've had no reason to be unhappy.

It's just that...when I was in fifth grade and we had to write letters to our twelth-grade selves, I wrote "Sanji: I hope you're traveling around the world learning how to cook every kind of food and that you get to see the Tigris and the Euphrates because that's what I want to do and I hope you still want to." And by the time I was sixteen I knew that wasn't ever going to happen. I didn't even open my letter after graduation. I just threw it in the trash on the way out of the auditorium. Maybe it got recycled. Maybe it's part of a million pieces of letter-size copy paper all across the country. A bit of my stupid ten-year old self for everyone to write on.

The clock reads almost four o'clock when Luffy comes strolling into the Baratie. Usopp is following behind him, carrying his bag and his painting kit. I am not really in the mood.

"Oh, I thought you'd be packed by now," Luffy says.

What?

"What?" I say.

Luffy sits down at the counter. "Didn't Usopp tell you?" He spins round and round on the seat. "We're gonna go get his ship at the harbor and sail out of here. We're gonna be pirates!" He grins at me for a second before going round again.

Now I have a headache _and_ I'm not in the mood. "Usopp doesn't have a ship," I tell Luffy, and glare at Usopp, who just shrugs.

"Yes, he does!" Luffy stops spinning to stare at me. "We just put all our stuff on her. She's called the _Going Merry_. Neat name, huh?"

I'm doing some staring of my own at Usopp. "So you _were_ telling the truth," I say.

"Well, yeah." Usopp plops down ungracefully next to Luffy. He looks offended. "I don't lie about _everything_."

"Huh." I don't stop polishing wine glasses. "And you're taking him with you? Just 'cause he's got a ship? Come on, look at the kid. His knees start shaking when someone looks at him wrong."

"Yeah," Luffy agrees while Usopp glares. He grabs an apple from the basket on the counter without asking, and eats half of it in one bite. "But he's a good shot with a gun."

Oh, _God_. I don't even ask how Luffy knows that. I don't want to know. Who cares, anyway? The whole thing is ridiculous, and I tell him so. Pirates, sailing the ocean - that's all dreams. This isn't the fucking sixteenth century anymore.

Luffy looks as thoughtful as someone can with an apple core sticking out of his mouth. "I see your point," he says seriously, "but the way I figure it, is _either_ you stay here forever and never go anywhere that's not on the Metro-North, _or_ we sail to France and you get to cook in France. Besides, Usopp says we need a chef and you're the best one I know. So you gotta come with us, too."

He needs a chef and that's why I should leave my life to be an outlaw. "Uh huh," I say. It's gonna take a lot more than that to convince me. "You do know that 'pirate' means 'international crimminal,' right?"

"Yeah, I know. That's okay, though." It's stupid, but something about his tone, the absolutely matter-of-fact way he says it, makes me see things from their point of view for a minute. What have they got to lose? Luffy can put his feet behind his head _anywhere_. What's so great about doing it for the viewing pleasure of others? What's so great about Usopp sitting in front of the Library day after day, watching people not buy his paintings? What's so great about me, cooking five-star meals in a restaurant no one knows about and looking at an inaccurate map of Mesopotamia?

Nothing, that's what. But I can't just leave. This life I've got, it's not ideal, but I know what's gonna happen each day.

That's just it, though, right? I know what's gonna happen. The same thing. Over and over. So on and so forth, until I die.

I have to say something. "We might get killed." Jesus, did I just say _we_?

Luffy spreads his hands out. "So?" he says, and grins. It's amazing. I've never seen this smile before, on anybody. I can't describe it. It's just heart-stoppingly sweet and wild and it makes me feel like I can do anything. So this is what it looks like, I'm thinking, looking at the way Luffy's smile imitates that scar under his eye and which the stitch marks, in turn, imitate the lines of his teeth. All the things that are bigger than life, that are more important than the repitition of our beating hearts, this grin of Luffy's is what they look like. Suddenly, just like that, I'm sold, I'm hooked. I'm ten years old again.

"Hey." The words burst out before I can stop myself. "You guys know anything about Sumer?"

- - - - - -

One hour later we're dashing arm-in-arm down Lexington Ave., me with a couple of bags over my shoulder and Usopp and Luffy telling me about all the fun we'll have at sea. We barely stop as we get to Nami's building. Luffy pounds on the buzzer, and we barge through the doors as soon as she replies. Up the elevator and down the hall to her apartment. We open the door without knocking.

Zoro is sitting at the window. Empty bottles beside him tell us that he's been drinking for most of the afternoon. The blotches on Nami's cheeks means she's been crying.

For the first time, that doesn't matter. I sit back and let Luffy work his earnest, exhilarating magic on them. It's going to be okay, I have to stop myself from shouting, even though just like Usopp I'm grinning from ear to ear like an idiot. Nami's going to be our nagivator and Zoro's going to be the first mate like he used to be. We're gonna get out of this apartment with its fake plastic plants and we're gonna leave this city behind, and we're gonna get in a ship and sail away and be pirates. And when we do, everything's going to be different.

I just know it.

-----finis  
**notes:** Thoughts? Advice? Violent knee-jerk reactions? The 'submit review' button begs to be pushed.


End file.
